…hello I want to let this thread for your consideration.
To punch a knock out you need at least have a body mass of 80kgs, so if you are smaller the % to realize it decrease big time. Regarding surfboards and volume is somewhat the same; of course if the wave cooperates you still have technique, like a good surfer gal with those big retro longboards.
I really see the problem with semi and guns in “normal” large surf; very difficult to obtain a powerful rail oriented bottom turn for a small guy.
Many more things to say but better to hear other opinions.
You need volume to float, a thin rail for rail turns, and a narrower outline to make it easier for the smaller surfer to change rails and to get toe and heel pressure closer to the rails. That means lengthening the board or doming the center to replace the volume lost in narrowing the outline and thinning the rail. Easy to do if you are ordering a custom, handmade board rather than some mass produced “model” board…
hi reverb i am 43 years old and 96 kg and up to 100kg. 6 foot 3. my only board i ride is a 6 3. i surf in up to double overhead confidently and get plenty of waves even when there is a crew on it. but these waves are not super heavy . they are deep water breaks. with the odd section. i surf it into up to head and half in heavier tube riding waves. the board has a thick rail it is 3 inches thick with a wide point forward a wide nose and a rounded pin tail. it is thick through out only slightly foiled in the tail. with reasonably soft edges on the bottom. it has a single concave. and fcs pg7 in fiberlgass carbon…sometimes i find the rail to thick to pum speed so it makes the board kinda useless in small waves. i surf off the front foot in small waves on it and surf it more like a single fin. i often thought it would work better as a single fin as pumping off the rail is hard work.
so for me the extra volume is a liability on the rail in a thruster configuration. but i can catch big waves easily so it offsets that and also big waves i surf more off the bottom turn rather then high line pumping. i have no trouble laying over a bottom turn at full speed however. it is about 21.5 wide so i an going to 23 wide next and a touch longer so i can keep the perfect amount of volume and get a thinner rail. or i could keep the thick rail and leave thrusters and go to a single fin . i have a couple of US blanks 68 blanks that i will do something new with. and maybe switch to a a two board quiver
I’m only 5’6" but I weight about 170 now. Even at 145 lbs. I could do a full on bottom turn. I actually really enjoy doing them all the time. It allows you to make up quite a bit of distance, so when you have a late drop, you just go down a little further then put all your energy into that turn and you’ll often get around the lip right into the sweet spot. A lot of people have dropped in on me thinking I was too far back and then be surprised that I’m right behind them.
Maybe it’s just the way young people surf, they often make small pre-turns before making that hard turn. Maybe it’s because I surfed the north shore back in the early '70s when everyone made those kinds of turns. BK was a big influence on my surfing, I think he was a big influence on all of us back then. Reno was a really big influence on me too because he is a small guy just like me. I loved his smooth style. It wasn’t till Tom Curren came to Hawaii that I saw that staged turn style. I think it was because the power of the waves. Instead of making a single huge gouge he broke it into a small setup turn then a bigger fuller turn. Now everyone does it.
I know this feel. I just weighed myself… 118.5lbs. 5’5" tall. Heavier in a 5mm suit.
I don’t surf huge waves, like pipe huge. Winter storms or hurricanes in jersey is as big as it gets. I agree with LeeV. I do my rails thin. I like wider boards so I keep wider outlines, but I’m also not much of a power person. My good wave board is a 5’5"x19 thruster. I’d like to try a 5’10" round tail with a bit more rocker one time. A short round tail tube rider thing is a better fit for me than a 6’ something semi gun shape made for power turns. I do try and keep slightly straighter outlines so I’m not riding this little board with a ton of curve to it.
As for rail oriented bottom turns, I really don’t do them. The wave I surf is often fast at the start so I try and just get up and go. After a few high line pumps I’m all set to come off the bottom and turn to hit the lip, or cut back. But I rarely do them off the drop in. It’s also often a right and I’m goofy. Maybe if i went left more it’d be different. I pretty much start turning once my feet hit the board. I never do the ones where people pretty much go straight to shore, let the whitewash practically pass them, then gain speed through the turn and catch up. Those look great though.
I feel like all my boards have too much volume overall, but it’s all in the middle. I don’t have a problem tipping it side to side. Extra volume is nice in the winter, and it’s great when it’s warmer because I can get away with pretty small boards and not have an issue in small surf.
I think shark country has it about right. I good drawn out bottom turn is a skill that lots of younger surfers lack. Two ways to get around a section and build up speed. Either a committed single bottom turn, hard on rail, or lots of little speed pumps. Younger surfers tend to do the speed pumps, older surfers, especially those who learned on a single fin like to draw out the turn. Most videos today are about dragging your ass in the water to stall for a tube, or pumping to speed for the aerial. A thicker rail is better for the drawn out turn. Thinner rails for the pump. IMHO, its not any harder to put a thick rail on edge than a thinner one. Its more that the thick and thinner rails will do different things once they are on edge.
ok so we are talking how to engage the rail to use your center of balance to sort of pump the board for speed. like tic tac toe on a skateboard right. so you are not passive but muscle and body movement of weighting and unweighting the rail to develop speed. this requires a thin rail with some flex properties that suit this style of surfing. it is required fo surfing thrusters which seem to slow down if surfed passively in a trim unless the body weight is realy forward. if you surf a thruster pasively with your weight back the board is slow and unresponsive. the more volume and thicker the rail the harder is the board to surf in the unweighting style. can also be a tendency to baby bottom turns as you have not enough g force when your body is inclined as the board is not driving fast enough through the turn or maybe slipping sideways a little. so you want the volume right to catch waves an paddle but surfing style is adapted . these are things i have changed to give me rail speed. ok
i have moved the wide point forward and surf off the front foot
i keep the board length at my height or less to enable to switch to back foot surfing without moving my feet
i have a low entry rocker under 20mm at the 12inch mark
to help with bottom turns on bigger waves i have big stiff glass fins. no plastic and larger the better and soft edges in the tail
i get back looseness in tail by incorporating a deep single concave and flip the last 3 inches. this enables tight turns at speed
so this is all on a one board quiver design. i have surfed the same board for a few years now i think its been
what im changing is going to two quiver setup and make a long version of this 4 inches taller than me.with a thinner rail and widepoint moved back to a couple of inches forward center. i will maintain the same design elements except i will add a single fin box in and other boxes and try different configurations to enable speed without the need to pump speed
the shorter board with have thinner tail with hard edges and slightly thinner rail
a fat rail is ok and a lot of surfers would benefit from it depending on the style and ability
i would say most intermediate level surfers would get more out of volume and a fat rail then any other element being sold today
even tho it doesnt give the sensation of high performance short board it can still be used to surf in a really fun way, basically i think the hybrid is the way to go and not anymore is it a hybrid. its just design that has work since the 70s. when they got it right
Reverb, I make bottoms turns like that with boards up to 8’ now. I am currently riding 7’ and 8’ single fin round pins and the waves would be no bigger than the wave Bud is riding. That’s the way we learned how to make a bottom turn. Get into a low crouch as you drop and push hard while extending your legs some. The longer you hold that turn the more vertical it will be, but you can use it to propel yourself out further as well. I think it is easier to make that turn on a semi or full gun because the tail is narrower. I’ll look for a shot I have doing a bottom turn on a 8’ single fin egg shape.
FYI… I used to only ride shorter boards, but in the 80’s everyone here starting riding longer and longer boards. Today there are more long boards in the water where I surf, so I ride boards antwhere between 5-10 and 10’, but the 7’-8’ are my prefered “long boards”. My big wave board used to be 7’ 3" (BK photo) but now I ride a 8’ semi gun shape, and I have a 10’ fun gun shape (red board).
All Hail The full rail digging a trench while gliuding one one across the face of the wave. There is this feeling you get from aturn like that. You feel the resistance and the building of energy. Reverb keep in mind that back in the Mid 70s Boards were for the most part thick with hawk down turned noses and full brewer style D rail and usally 3 inches of foam on the stringers. You can bury that rail as Sharkcountry pointed out Reno was not a big guy. Yet he could sink that rail in and get that fin up on edge with water sheering off the fin. With multi fin board you should be able to lay that board over on the rail with more confidence
It’s more that it’s my good wave board because I just don’t like big boards. I mean, I do enjoy my new 8ft thing or my 6’4" single fin, but if I’m going to surf a good wave in a “high performance” manner I want something small. I’m 22 and very much one of those people who does the tic tac type skateboard turns, which is natural for me since I’ve been skateboarding for a long time. I’m sure length would help me get in or negotiate some drops, but once I’m up and riding it’s sort of useless to be on a 6’0’'.
It’s more my skill and style that prevents me from doing huge gouging rail turns. I’m light footed from skateboarding, and used to a 32"x8.25" board under my feet. So the 5’5" has a 15" tail and 13" nose, and a blocky squash tail. I like wide boards. They flow quicky and feel skatey. I would like to try a pintail or round pin. I tend to ride very front foot heavy, which is from skateboarding for sure, and probably because I’m right footed but goofy. If you look at my shoes the right sole is way more worn than the left. Maybe a very low area tail would help me apply more back foot pressure or make use of it.
I’ve always felt that you should ride the smallest board you can in better waves. There’s so much more control riding a short board. But, you need to catch the wave before you can ride it. As I get older and surf less, I have more chances of catching waves with a longer board. This is mostly because there are so many people riding long boards now. Many of these people have never learned how to surf on a short board, they’ve only been surfing for a short time and they started on long boards. A lot of the younger people that do surf on short boards are too young to have started on single fin boards. There’s a difference between the way a single fin and a thruster turns. I learned back when we’d go all the way to the bottom and layout a hard turn. You really jammed the board into that turn, and it resulted in an equal amount of force pushing you out and up the face of the wave. I still do that style of turn often. In the last several months, I have pulled the fin boxes out on several of my boards. I was starting to go crazy because my favorite boards were out of commission. Thinking back I think it’s because of the way I push so hard on that first bottom turn. With single fins, it doesn’t put as much pressure on the fin. With boards that have fins on the rail, I’m putting a lot of pressure on those side fins. I’ve done this with glassed on fins too. They mostly delam from the foam and then it’s a major fix. Funny it’s almost always the fin on the inside rail on my frontside, the fin that’s getting the most stress. My newest boards, and the ones I’m fixing have a layer of glass over the boxes, so I’m hoping that holds them down. Next step is to get the Gearbox system, but I have enough proboxes for 2 or 3 more boards.
These are photos of me on my 8’ egg like board. Very full round rails with a slight edge then squarer rails in the tail. The board is the second from the right with the brown stripe
Bloody love long driving hand dragging bottom turns. Looking up as the waves walls up.
Silly have you got a pic of that board ?I’m I similar size to you.
yep i got a picture and some of me riding it on waves
loving it .i would say its the best board ive ever owned really in all round requirement. and i can still bury a rail with some effort. but its hard work for s turns
